


Once more unto the breach

by ABadFeelingAboutThis



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Indoctrination Theory, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 07:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABadFeelingAboutThis/pseuds/ABadFeelingAboutThis
Summary: Post-Indoctrination Theory, Destroy ending. Was going to write more on this, but then I realised that this particular interpretation of the theory is full of plot holes and that I'd have to do some serious thinking to sort it all out. So now there's just this oneshot thing.





	Once more unto the breach

The woman's first breath felt like a scream. She felt burning, nerves sparking as her body jerked, involuntarily, just once. There was too much noise inside her, but, as she lay in the wet darkness for a while, it subsided. She became aware that she was lying on some kind of ground. There was pain eating at the edges of her perception. Something felt wrong with it.

She opened her eyes and vomited weakly from the side of her mouth onto the ground. She pushed her head up a little and vomited again from the brightness of the whole scene. This was not where she had been before being here. There had been fire before blackness. There had been a smooth floor that she had seen herself in. There had been--

She had died before, and this was not a smooth shutting down of consciousness. This was broken glass in the brain. She was Shepard, who had been told she would be dead. But the beam was so bright that it was the only thing she could see.

She was Shepard, who had killed--

She managed to push herself up, supporting her upper body on two shaking arms, then one. Suddenly she was sitting, but she didn't remember doing that at all. She was slumped over, turned away from the Reaper beam. Gunfire ahead of her.

"I had to," Shepard breathed. "Had hope." There was a big black line on her armour that ran the full height of what she could see. 

"Commander Shepard?"

"Don't. I can't. Please don't, EDI."

"Do you need medical assistance, Commander? I will require your position," EDI's voice said into her head.

"I had to."

Something red tore the sky. Shepard looked up. In the charged darkness, a giant silhouette was moving distantly.

"No." She jerked her head back. "I didn't--"

"Shepard. Are you still on the ground?"

Now it was Hackett's voice. Her communicator?

"Yes. But I fired the Crucible. They shouldn't be here." The focus of her vision shifted, becoming sharper, screwing into her skull. "I killed them."

"Commander," Hackett said over the communicator. "No-one has fired the Crucible. A Reaper landed several direct hits on the approach to the beam. What is your position?"

"The Geth and EDI are dead." Or they should have been. But she wasn't. The Reapers weren't. Another wave of nausea overwhelmed Shepard.

"I am fully functional, Commander. No-one has accessed the Citadel," said EDI.

That red line tore the sky again, stabbing down into something behind a far away building. There had been fire before blackness.

"Then what the _fuck_ did I do?"

Shepard's entire body screamed as she forced it past pain. It was even worse here the second time. Her armour clung uselessly to her, medi-gel sticking to the torn suit underneath as she turned to face the beam in tortuous steps. No-one here was alive. No.

"Shepard. We have reason to believe you are indoctrinated," said Hackett urgently. "Get to safety and do not enter the beam."

"What?"

"I repeat, do not use that beam! That's a direct order, Commander. We can extract you once you reach a safe zone."

"I can end this now."

Straight ahead, Harbinger loomed. Its eyes were dimmed; there was no movement across its solid shape.

"Fuck you, Reaper. You're going to pay for everything you've done."

Something flared in her. Her skin bristled weakly with biotic energy as she dragged herself onward.

"Palaven. Thessia. Bastards, I'm going to destroy you for what you've done to Earth."

The sky was red and choked in smoke and light. Things would be undone.

"I'm going to fire the Crucible, and then I'm going to wipe you off the face of the fucking galaxy. Fuck you."

She turned the comm implant off. It didn't matter any more.

Shepard stepped forward again, never faltering, and the beam engulfed her like cold flame.

**Author's Note:**

> I realised halfway through that there was literally no reason for the Reapers to keep the beam on if Shepard's indoctrination had failed, so, instead, her breaking of the attempt created a massive overload of feedback for Harbinger and it was just... rebooting. Mhm.


End file.
